Part of Rural Call Completion Order Difficult to Implement, USTelecom, ITTA Say
USTelecom and the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance jointly asked the FCC to revise its Nov. 8 rural call completion order to drop a data collection requirement on intraLATA interexchange/toll calls carried entirely over the originating LEC’s network or handed off by the originating LEC directly to the terminating LEC. The associations questioned whether requiring LECs to tabulate and report this data is consistent with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). NARUC and several other parties also commented on a further NPRM released with the order. The FCC, under acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, unanimously approved rules in late October, limiting data retention obligations to calls destined only to rural ILECs (CD Oct 29 p2).
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"It appears” none of the largest telcos has the systemic capability to capture and report the required data for interexchange/toll traffic, USTelecom and ITTA said. Since uncompleted calls are not billed, carriers generally don’t retain this data, they said in a filing (http://bit.ly/1kHgGJs). “There has never been a business reason for LECs to design their networks to capture such information.” The groups estimated that such rules would take 18-24 months to implement and cost the industry collectively more than $100 million. “Imposing such burdens on covered providers would raise serious issues under the” PRA, while this data “would not aid the Commission’s information collection or otherwise facilitate its ability to address call competition problems,” the associations said.
The filing in part raised an issue already being looked at by the government. “The data collection requirements are subject to separate review by the Office of Management and Budget under the PRA,” said a telco official. “The filing raises the PRA argument as simply one of several policy implications associated with collecting, retaining and reporting the particular data at issue.” The FCC sought OMB review of the order Dec. 30.
NARUC said in comments on the NPRM that the requirements should apply broadly, including to wireless carriers. “The FCC seeks comment on whether the agency should impose certifications or other obligations on intermediate providers,” the state regulators said (http://bit.ly/1ja0CM4). “Although the originating carrier is ultimately responsible for completing the call, all providers routing traffic should be obligated to abide by standards and rules.” NARUC called for establishment of a federal Intermediate Provider Registry. The FCC shouldn’t offer carriers anything more in the way of safe harbors on collection and retention of data, NARUC said. “Until the FCC has more experience with the information it has currently ordered to be collected, such action is premature.”
Verizon and Verizon Wireless asked the FCC to exercise a light regulatory hand in implementing the rules. “The Commission should do two things: (1) adjust the reporting safe harbor to allow more carriers to use it (without compromising the rationale behind the safe harbor); and (2) avoid further obligations on providers that would detract from implementation of the Order and effective carrier-to-carrier efforts to resolve problems on a near real-time basis,” the carriers said (http://bit.ly/1eRjYVv).
The FCC should allow carriers to exclude from their reports any autodialer calls that are “readily distinguishable,” NCTA said. “Even if voluntary reporting of autodialer traffic is allowed, the Commission should recognize in analyzing the call completion data that the number of non-completed calls may be erroneously large due to the presence of unidentifiable autodialer calls.” Comptel earlier filed a petition seeking reconsideration of the order.